FOR the SNP , a game of musical chairs seems to in the offing. The writ may not yet have been moved on a UK General Election , but like autumn, you can already smell one on the breeze. Westminster may not quite be the “dead parliament” Attorney General Geoffrey Cox described this week, but the paralysis gripping the House of Commons now seems terminal.

We have Boris Johnson’s minority government – which says it wants an immediate election – held pinioned in place by an opposition which has no confidence in either the Prime Minister or his political programme. In parallel, Boris Johnson continues to pretend Britain will be leaving the EU on October 31 come hell or high water – but the chance of a new accord with Brussels still seems remote, and the Benn Act locks the Prime Minister by law into seeking an extension from the EU27 before Hallowe’en.

At once, the UK Government maintains that it respects the rule of law while the backrooms of Whitehall are alive with speculation about Dominic Cummings-shaped chicanery, attempting to Houdini Boris Johnson out of the legislation’s restrictions. Despite all the effort going into this legal escapology, it is difficult to see any chink in the chain which would allow the PM to slip free from the duties the legislation imposes upon his office. If there’s no deal by Halloween, someone is going to have to write that letter to the President of the European Council, asking for Brexit to be delayed until the end of January next year.

But there are more despites. Despite all the focus on avoiding a No-Deal Brexit on October 31, it isn’t remotely clear how this Parliament could chart a positive route out of the present impasse. Despite all the rhetoric, it is also clear the UK is not prepared to leave the European Union without a deal. Despite what senior members of the UK Government will tell you, there is no such thing as Brexit with a “clean break”. There is only the possibility of a messy fracture, and many months and years spent reknitting relations with the EU.

READ MORE: Leading pro-independence campaigners on how we secure a Yes vote now

One way or another, this political dynamic must change. So you can understand why candidate selection meetings across the country are finalising the raft of nominees to put before the electorate for the General Election which is sliding messily towards us. While all the SNP’s sitting MPs have been confirmed in their places, despite rumbling around some of their vetting, Theresa May’s snap poll in 2017 deprived the Nationalists of 21 of the 54 seats they won just two years before. Some of the defeated candidates want a second shot at elected office. Other winnable constituencies had no obvious successors. And here’s where the chairs get musical.

Having topped the European Parliament list for the SNP in June, Alyn Smith has now secured the party’s Westminster nomination for Stirling, hoping to overhaul Stephen Kerr’s delicate 148-vote majority. This week, we learn that former cabinet secretary for justice Kenny MacAskill (pictured) wants in on the game too. Having retired from his Edinburgh Eastern constituency in 2016, the former MSP is seeking the nomination in George Kerevan’s old seat of East Lothian.

Watching Mr MacAskill’s political arc having left office has been a fascinating study in the licence and forgetfulness which often characterises old politicians who find themselves at a loose end. Left chewing sour grapes after being handed his jotters as cabinet secretary, MacAskill has filled his days since leaving Holyrood by peddling conspiracy theories in his Scotsman column and criticising people for the kind of control-freakery he enthusiastically engaged in when he was a senior member of the Scottish Government. The outrage of the fixer turned rebel is a precious thing.

During MacAskill’s gaffe-strewn and hyperbolic custodianship of Holyrood’s biggest justice job, he was thin-skinned and sensitive to criticism, constantly given to dumb exaggeration and unfocused media and parliamentary performances in defence of his brief. And MacAskill often found himself on the defensive, mostly because of the clumsy and inflammatory way he handled himself in office.

READ MORE: Gerry Hassan: No quick fix for crisis gripping UK democracy

In a week in which the Supreme Court has come under attack from Britain’s right-wing Brexit press, it’s worth remembering the SNP’s potential parliamentary candidate for East Lothian was an early adopter of this kind of rhetoric. In response to a perfectly reasonable decision by the Supreme Court, correcting a miscarriage of justice the Scottish courts had allowed to pass uncorrected, MacAskill went on the attack.

He claimed the court’s knowledge of Scotland was “limited to a visit to the Edinburgh Festival” and threatened to withhold funding from the court on the basis that “he who pays the piper calls the tune”. Any Tory minister who’d come out with that kind of patter this week would have justly been condemned for it. MacAskill now says he “bitterly regrets” these crass comments, but refused to apologise at the time.

But there’s something funny about elements of the SNP old guard looking for a new lease of life in God’s waiting room, with moderately attractive Thames-side views and boarding-school catering. For the Dick Whittingtons in the Scottish Tories, London is the big league. In 2017, Ross Thomson, Douglas Ross and John Lamont were falling over themselves to abandon the Holyrood seats they had just won for the high life on London’s green leather benches. After all, who could resist the temptations of being appointed the unsalaried parliamentary secretary of state for Scotland?

In its pomp, Scottish Labour allowed the same dynamic to infect relations between its Holyrood and Westminster delegations. Despite burnishing the party’s credentials as “the party of devolution”, its MPs preened themselves that the party sent its “A team” to London, while the Bs, Cs and subs bench were left to sweep the shop back in Edinburgh.

Significantly, most of the SNP MPs don’t think that way. The House of Commons is a dead end for an ambitious SNP politician, with long commutes, long hours and long odds on exercising any real influence over British politics. There are, inevitably, considerations about the future leadership of the party in play here too. In the age of devolution, the leader of the modern SNP cannot work out of London.

While MacAskill and Smith look for House of Commons berths, one figure in the party’s Westminster group tells me that a number of their colleagues are now turning their eyes thoughtfully back to the Holyrood constituencies skirting their own. “For us, Holyrood is the senior parliament. If you’re ambitious, if you want to be a minister or a committee chair, it’s Holyrood you want to be in, not Westminster.” Several experienced SNP MSPs have indicated they are minded to retire when the next Holyrood race comes round in 2021.

More than one SNP MP in Westminster is keeping a weather eye on developments. The class of 2016 contained plenty of new faces. Some newbies, such as Mairi Gougeon and Kate Forbes, have already made their way into government. But for the SNP, 2021 looks like a year of renewal too. There are plum targets and prime Holyrood constituencies likely to fall vacant. Ruth Davidson’s political implosion will only encourage potential candidates in her Edinburgh Central seat – with its majority of 410. Alyn Smith, former Westminster leader Angus Robertson and Joanna Cherry have – more and less publicly – expressed an interest in taking on the seat in the capital.

Elsewhere in the country, there’s a whole generation of Nationalist politicians who’re approaching the big 7-0 by the time 2021 comes around. Among these children of the 1950s, Alex Neil will be leaving Airdrie and Shotts vacant.

Let the General Election come. But for the SNP in both Holyrood and in Westminster, expect the musical chairs to continue.